There are certain admissions pretty much guaranteed to get you run out of town by baying foodies waving sharpened forks – you don't understand snail porridge, you don't like foie gras – but my problem is far, far worse: I love the food on aeroplanes.

It implies a certain jet-set sophistication to be blasé about flying and for years any standup comic at a loss for material has been able to riff on airline food. But to me it's a miracle. Unless you're Richard Branson, flying is still an extraordinary occurrence. You get off thousands of miles away from where you got on. You get fed, for heaven's sake, 30,000ft above the ground, travelling at the speed of a bullet. As a child I remember being fascinated by the magical bento-like plastic trays, everything wrapped like a present and the impossible excitement of an airborne picnic. Hell, I still feel like an astronaut as I wrestle with the Cellophane today. And such food! Meat braised to a consistency where it could be cut with a plastic spork. Cooked slow, rested and reheated – it's the kind of thing they do with your lamb shoulder at a painfully hip restaurant and charge you a fortune for. All served in sauces seasoned to enliven a palate dulled by air-conditioning, altitude and the odd smell emanating from the WC in the tail.

Times have changed, though. Budget airlines have done away with the full hot meal service in favour of a sort of flying snack bar.

But things are not as bad as they might seem. I tested offerings from from five low-cost airlines and the results were surprisingly good. They have been extremely smart in their choice of menu, offering the kind of hot food that improves with storage and reheating, and sourcing sandwiches as squeaky fresh as most decent high street cafes. I managed to find something on every menu that was either outright delicious, or had that fantastic characteristic of old-school airline food – you simply can't imagine it ever existing on the ground – and scored all the menus for general taste and value for money.

Ryanair ★★★✩✩

The most comprehensive menu of the low-cost carriers. All the sandwiches (not cheap at £4.50) and wraps (£5.35) were highly seasoned and fresh tasting – no blandness here. But for in-flight food lovers, the real treat is the cheeseburger with relish (£4.50). A reheated bun, burger and orange cheese combo may sound counterintuitive but when ketchupped and reassembled it tastes like the kind of thing you might have had in a Tennessee roadside diner circa 1960. If you get a chance, snap one up because something so fundamentally wrong and completely delicious is never going to be available down here at sea level. It's probably best to avoid the baguette-based "pizzas" which have a pappy texture, a strange smell and all the culinary appeal of a rolled-up disposable nappy.

BMI Baby★✩✩✩✩

The Hot Bacon Baguette (£3.50) is their most popular item, and we could see why – thin-cut smoked bacon in a baguette that is part-cooked when loaded on to the plane, and freshly baked when served – is going to tick many boxes with hungry holidaymakers. The best fare, though, was the Chili Con Carne with Camargue red rice (£6.50 including beer or wine). The packaging tells a wonderful story about sourcing meat from happy cows and it's true that it retains an exceptionally beefy taste, but the best thing about a good chilli is how it improves with age. Well- prepared food that benefits from storage and reheating – this was starting to feel like the good old days. Sadly, though, not good enough to compensate for a series of flavourless sandwiches and a hot mozzarella and cheese panini that smelt of bananas.

Monarch ★★★★✩

Offers a variety of snacks from £3, sandwiches at £3.50 and old-fashioned hot meals in tinfoil trays for £6. A sausage and mash meal with rich gravy was a comforting delight though even the most enthusiastic fan would have to admit it looks unspeakably grim in its container. The sausage was smooth textured and packed with spicy seasoning but the real treasure was the Thai vegetable curry. Reheating gives the flavours time to work a kind of alchemy only revealed when the lid is tugged back, releasing a heady gust of lemon grass and galangal. A pretty high score for being so unashamedly retro and keeping the price sensible. Be warned though, sandwiches were not available at time of testing.

Easyjet ★★★★✩

Easyjet's small menu purports to offer a bistro-in-the-sky. The very fresh chicken salad baguette (£3.50) and the cheese ploughman's (£3.50) certainly wouldn't have disgraced any cafe on the ground for freshness. However, the most exciting discovery was a Croque Monsieur according to the packet – though the menu calls it the far-more-British Ham & Cheese Melt (£3). This had a spectacularly thick top layer of rich béchamel, spiked with good strong mustard which, on reheating, kept the whole thing moist and gorgeous. The regular sandwiches, however, were sadly let down by criminal underseasoning. Lovely ingredients, fresh as the morning dew, but utterly devoid of flavour.

Flybe ★★★✩✩

By far the best fresh food of the lot. All three of the Best of British sandwiches, chicken salad, chutney and cheese and BLT (£3.75) were exceptional, certainly better than many we'd buy on land. The chutney had a soft, sweet flavour, quite unlike the usual brutal pickle. Unfortunately the soup was a reconstituted vegetable chowder enblazoned with a picture of Ainsley Harriot. C'mon Flybe – where's the tinfoil, the gravy, the little sachets of salt?

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